


These Are the Reasons I Think That I'm Ill

by liketreesinnovember



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Animal Abuse, F/M, Gen, Imprisonment, Mai (Avatar)-Centric, Starvation, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27013894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketreesinnovember/pseuds/liketreesinnovember
Summary: Things go differently in Ba Sing Se and Azula takes Zuko back to the Fire Nation as a prisoner. Mai visits the boy she once had a crush on in his cell.
Relationships: Azula & Mai (Avatar), Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Kudos: 63





	These Are the Reasons I Think That I'm Ill

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry young man, I cannot be your friend  
> I don’t believe in a fairytale end  
> I don’t keep my head up all of the time  
> I find it dull when my heart meets my mind
> 
> \- Laura Marling, “My Manic and I”

It’s significantly colder down in the dungeons below the palace than anywhere else in Caldera. Normally there is no escaping the heat, and the palace was built specifically to let in as much sunlight as possible (that’s what happens when you have firebenders making all the important decisions, naturally.) Here, though, there are no windows, just solid stone miles beneath the earth. She didn’t know why she should bother navigating all those stone steps, in the dark, at the risk of stepping in something gross. She was even risking the possibility of being seen  _ conniving with a traitor _ , although fortunately Mai was used to going where she wanted to unnoticed, and was particularly good at it. Nobody had paid much attention to her all her life, and that suited her just fine, especially since they weren’t about to start paying attention now. Some of them knew her as Azula’s friend but they didn’t really care, and Mai tended to have that effect on people, just as other people had that effect on her. So it was a win-win, really. If anyone saw her down here she would just say that she was running an important errand for the princess, and no one would think twice about it or dare question her with Azula’s name on her lips.

That was true, in a way. Azula  _ had _ asked her to speak with Zuko, although she could not possibly imagine why.

Well, she  _ could _ possibly imagine, but those were all stupid reasons.

It’s not like she’d even thought about the boy in years, Azula’s big brother who was loud and stupid and so easily provoked to the kind of blustery foolishness that particularly annoyed her about dumb, little boys. They pulled her hair and tried to get her attention and told her she should  _ smile. _ How she hated them.

Zuko never had done any of those things, though.

There had always been something raw and vulnerable about him, like a turtleduck without its shell, quick to anger and quick to hurt, and maybe that’s what had so interested her, back then. Her own nature was so very opposite, or maybe it was just that vulnerable people were easy, easy to figure out, easy to deal with. Until they wanted her to be vulnerable too, that is. Then it just got boring.

She had once watched Azula poking at one of the ducks with a stick, while it hid itself inside the hard outer shell, just to make Ty Lee cry. The little thing had not been  _ hurt _ , so Mai had not understood why their friend was so upset about it.

He’s curled up in the far corner of the cell and Mai sets her lantern down on the ground in front of the bars so that the light floods the small space, casting flickering shadows over the prisoner, who was  _ supposed _ to be a prince but certainly didn’t look it at the moment, his hair chopped short like a peasant and grown shaggy, his earth kingdom clothes soiled and ragged. Then of course there was the scar that marred the left side of his face, particularly ugly in the lamplight. She had not been there when it had happened, but she had heard the story, of course, even before Azula had told it to her in all its gloriously gruesome detail. Azula had always been fond of those sorts of details, especially when it came to her favorite subjects, like talking about how stupid her brother was. Mai never had much use for details herself, but she had to admit, it  _ was _ an impressive scar. That it had been three years was even more impressive. She thought of the turtleduck, hard in its shell. Mai might have suggested cracking the stupid thing open but what was the use of that? Azula could poke her sticks all she wanted.

He’d been down here for, what, a week? Already his skin had begun to take on the pallid color of firebenders who’d been deprived of sunlight for too long. She knew what it was like, had heard her uncle talking about it before. His gold eyes had faded to a dull, jaundiced shade of yellow. The left one, half-lidded always now, seemed unfocused. He saw her though, his face registering the slightest recognition but stubbornly refusing to betray anything else. Instead he sat with his back against the stone and his legs curled up in front of him. He was thin, his limbs seeming somehow too long and gangly for the rest of him, and she wondered if that was what awkward little boys who had grown into awkward, surly teenagers just looked like, or if earth kingdom food was really as bad as she suspected it was.

Not that whatever food they were sending down here had to be great, either, and she wouldn’t put it past Azula to tell the guards to “forget” to feed the prisoner.

He sits in silence and she obliges, and wonders if she is heartless. Maybe she prefers it this way, with bars between them and he cast in sickly shadows, a memory of a boy that she no longer remembers.

It’s several days before she comes back, with a heel of bread snuck from the kitchens, and she offers it to him through the bars. She’s thinking again of turtleducks and she almost smiles. She catches the slightest movement in his face, suspicion and that stupid stubbornness, which he tries to hide but even with the burned part of his face twisting his expression, she can read him.

Eventually he does move towards her, reaching out to take the proffered offering and then quickly retreating back against the wall of his cell, and she sees something else in his face, humiliation mixed with need, and he tears into the lump of bread ravenously, turning away from her.

He was never very good at hiding himself, even - or perhaps because of - having a sister like Azula. "If only you'd been smarter," she says, "perhaps you wouldn't be in this position now."

He doesn't say anything and doesn't look at her.

She comes back as often as she can, until he stops taking the bread from her and then stops eating altogether. It won't be long now before it happens, what happens to every flame when it's deprived of oxygen.

One day she manages to slip the key ring from the warden's belt without him noticing (nobody ever notices). She unlocks Zuko's cell. He can no longer stand, his body curled in on itself, and stares at her with blank, flickering eyes, like a candle on the verge of guttering out.

She stares back into the open cage.


End file.
